Strategic Usability Planning and Consultancy
Usability is too often treated as a single stand-alone event, rather than part of an integrated design process. While one-offs still provide benefits, realising the full business benefits only comes through proper and proactive planning. Creating an enjoyable user experience requires strategic planning and commitment.
Incorporating ease of use into your products actually saves money. Reports have shown it is far more economical to consider user needs in the early stages of design, than it is to solve them later. For example, in Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, author Robert Pressman shows that for every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product's release. - IBM, 2001
We can help design plans to integrate usability into existing business processes, help create strategies to 'institutionalise' user-centred thinking, or even be your usability staff 'on hand'.
Benefits
Strategic usability planning and consultancy has a number of advantages:
- Offers objective and external advice on the best strategies to create user-centred focus on product development and 'business as usual' activity
- Transfers crucial usability knowledge to staff through on-the-job training
- Begins building teams of people with interest and skills in usability and an appreciation for the end user
- Encourages long term commitment rather than a short term fix
- Introduces fresh thinking
- Demonstrates the importance of user-centred thinking to design and customer service
Typical deliverable
Highly dependent on individual client's needs, but can include:
- Half- or full-day workshops.
- One of our consultants working as a usability practitioner within your organisation, and/or as the usability 'champion' for a set period of time.
Last updated: Thursday, May 07, 2009
